"The Lost", Chapter One
Title: The Lost
Chapter: 1/10
Fandom: Arashi
Character, Pairing(s): Jun, Aiba, Sho
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Sexual situations, and language. General disquiet?
Summary: Do you remember me? Lost for so long? Will you be on the other side? Will you forget me?
The hand around his waist gripped tighter, more possessively as his senpai’s warm breath tickled his neck. “Come on,” he said, louder than he should have in the dorm corridor at three in the morning. “Let me at least get my key out.”
“I am so wasted right now,” he heard against his earlobe, shivering at the feeling of moisture from the other man’s tongue.
He shakily got the key out of the pocket of his jeans, shoving it roughly into the lock and turning. They nearly tumbled into the room, and he barely got the door closed and relocked before fingers were tugging at the buttons of his shirt. “Your roommate here?” Senpai asked, almost an embarrassed afterthought.
“Home for the weekend.”
“Home for the weekend. Good,” was the response, and his limbs were so light and his movements sloppy as he struggled out of his shoes, kicking them to the corner of the room. Normally, he’d take the time to line them up, something his roommate always laughed at him for.
Jin’s desk was closer, and his hip collided with it hard enough to knock the guy’s folder full of old papers and class handouts to the floor. He’d fix it. Later. Instead he laughed, scooting until he was sitting down next to his roommate’s pencil case and pulling Senpai forward.
His mind was blurry, floating, awash with memories of the hours at the desk just feet away. Lecturing, flash cards, chart after fucking chart. And having Senpai watching over his shoulders, standing closer than he’d thought made sense, but now. Now it made sense.
There’d been sake. And then beer, and then something with an umbrella in it once his other classmates had gone back to the dorms before them. Macro Theory was done, his minor was halfway complete, and he was on Jin’s desk trying to catch his breath. He struggled out of his button-down as clumsy fingers worked on his belt. He was drunk, really drunk. But was this really going to happen?
Senpai had always been so quiet. But with a few drinks, that had changed. They both still smelled like the bar, the sweetness of the sake and the cloying cigarette smoke mingled, burrowing itself in his skin. Senpai had too much clothes on. He got greedy, tugging at the other man’s jacket, pulling at the thin t-shirt underneath and dragging his mouth along his jaw.
“Should have gotten a better grade,” Senpai was mumbling, voice husky and slurring. “Don’t know what we were celebrating.”
“Shut up.”
For someone always with his nose in a book, Senpai had a great body. His fingers lingered there, the skin there hot to the touch. He wanted to learn every part of it. He was too wasted to know who moved first, but he was off the desk, stumbling in the dark over piles of clothes and empty instant ramen cups and pulling Senpai with him.
He landed on his back, and why did they still have so much clothes on? The asshole in the room next door had his music on, a thumping bass that was pulsing almost rhythmically. For once, he didn’t actually mind the rumbling coming through the thin walls of the dorm. He caught Senpai’s lip between his teeth, sucking and nipping. There was still so much clothes. He was sweating.
It took an eternity to get all the way down to his boxers, and he arched up off of the mattress as Senpai reached for him. “Jesus,” he muttered, and the alcohol was making him feel like he was in free fall. It was clumsy. It was obvious that the older man didn’t know if he should focus on kissing him or working his cock up and down, but it wasn’t a dilemma he’d ever faced either.
The heat between his legs was building, and there wasn’t any talking now. Just hitching breaths and sighs and the music rattling the dorm wall. He ran his hand down the other man’s bicep as he worked, feeling the muscles tighten and loosen. It was so fast, like he was somewhere else as he came, burying his face in the other man’s neck, cigarettes and the faintest cologne and the thin black chain of his necklace. He’d probably just throw his sheets away since they were on break for the next few weeks anyhow.
He was tired, booze catching up the way it tended to at this point in the night, but he ignored his body’s protests and kissed his way along Senpai’s collarbone, letting his own hand go between their bodies. He was rewarded with a groan as he undid the small button keeping the front of the other man’s boxers closed. “Please,” Senpai whispered before pulling their mouths together again.
He was probably too sloppy, too rough, so drunk there was no way it was enjoyable, but the other man’s breath kept catching, moaning quietly as their lips broke contact every few seconds. It was so strange to feel the usually controlled, intellectually-minded man losing it, and it only spurred him on. He pushed Senpai’s face away, drawn once more to the scent of him, to the pulse point on his neck. He sucked at the skin there, rough and needy as his fingers slipped clumsily over the man’s cock.
There’d probably be a mark in the morning, purple and nasty, but he wasn’t hearing any complaints. Just the bass making his blood rush and the increasingly noisy sounds coming from the man beside him. “Oh god.” Senpai made some strangled gasp, like he couldn’t believe what was happening either, and there was warmth spilling into his hand before he realized it.
They both came down, crashing with the realization of what had happened in the minutes since leaving the bar. All he could do before passing out was to find the thin sheet the two of them had kicked down to the bottom of the bed, pulling it up to cover them both before he forgot himself entirely in sleep.
When he awoke, his head was pounding and he’d forgot that he’d set his alarm for 8:00. He knocked it off the table beside the bed, hearing it clatter to the floor with a thud. He pulled the sheet up over his head and was almost back to sleep until he realized he was alone.
Jin slammed the door so hard the mug on Jun's desk rattled against the grain.
"Asshole," his roommate grumbled. The lines on Jun's homework blurred a bit, numbers fading in and out of each other- he'd just started back up and he was already having trouble focusing. The semester was not looking promising, though he blamed a large part of that on Professor Ogura's monotonous voice that had soporific properties of uncharted power. Trying to drone out Jin's repeated mumbling, which Jun assumed was only supposed to be for Jin himself, he reached over and turned up the volume on the small television set perched atop a precariously high stack of hard-cover books.
He cracked his knuckles and looked back down at his statistics homework, but within moments Jin was loudly throwing around old notebooks, pulling them carelessly from his desk drawers. "You'd think that there'd be anyway I could just-"
"Jin," Jun called, taking a few seconds to try and calm his rising ire, "are you looking for something?"
His only answer was the crash of more books to the growing pile on the floor, and the crumpling of paper. Raising his fingers to massage his temples, Jun sighed. He hadn't expected the start of the new term to be easy, but he hadn't counted on pages of homework assignments within the first week. It was hard enough to get his brain back into study-mode; he could have used a week or two to ease back into the whole thing.
By the look of things, his best bet would be to hit the library after his last lecture just to get some peace and quiet in attempts to get his assignments done.
He leaned over and turned the volume on the TV up again. The woman on-location cut to one of night anchors in a crisp suit, hands folded seriously over a stack of documents on the desk in front of him.
"Don't know why he's yelling at me," Jin continued grumbling under his breath behind Jun's back, and there was the sound of what seemed to be the desk drawer getting pulled noisily from the tracks. "Bastard just likes to freak out and hear himself scream-"
Jun only got to five before getting too upset to continue, and had to restart the slow numbering under his breath. Tomorrow he'd hit the library. He couldn't afford to fall behind on studying because his roommate had a problem controlling his noise level.
He didn't think Professor Ogura was going to accept the excuse of 'I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't finish my homework because my roommate is a dick' for why all Jun's assignments were handed in blank.
"We are receiving reports from several government channels labeled as urgent, and apologize for interrupting the regularly scheduled local sports coverage," the anchor on the television screen said, and Jun's eyes lazily flicked to one side to watch. "According to the information we've received, there are a large number of potentially dangerous-"
The TV jolted black, and Jin's finger fell away from the power button with a 'tsk' of annoyance.
"Jin, I was watching that," Jun said.
"Some of us can't study with the television on," came the retort. He heard his roommate's weight settle into his desk chair, and several pages turn in the notebook before the music started up through his laptop speakers. For someone who "couldn't study with the TV on", Jin listened to his music awfully loud while reading textbooks. Jun was half-convinced the guy had an iTunes playlist titled something like metal to drive Jun crazy or seizure-inducing techno rave mix part III just for the occasions when he cracked a book open and pretended to absorb what it was attempting to teach him.
Jun took a deep breath to steady himself. "Think you could turn that down a bit?"
The only response was the little 'pings' of the volume being turned up. Swallowing down every possible scenario for how he could get away with murdering his roommate and blaming it on the custodial staff, Jun reached into the top drawer on his desk and pulled out his headphones and iPod.
It wasn't much, but sometimes he could pretend like Jin's emo music tastes were drowned out by Contemporary Sounds of the Nishiki Biwa.
--
He awoke to furious pounding on his door, so hard and fast it knocked down the coat hooks they had taped on the back with 3M strips. It startled him almost out of bed; his fingers had barely closed around his glasses on the desk before the door was thrown open by the RA holding a key with shaking hands.
"Get up," he rasped. "Get up and get your stuff."
"What?" Jun croaked- it felt like something had died in his throat. If he had to suffer through one more 'readiness' fire drill he was going to chuck his alarm clock at the RA's head.
The RA just threw the light switch on, flooding the room so fast it stung Jun's eyes. "Get up. Now."
There was something in his voice; the hitch, the tone, the waver- there was something on that was more than the university keeping consistent with fire drill policies. The RA was a big guy- was on the rowing team- and he looked nervous. Anxious. It was making little knots in Jun's stomach that didn't go away even as he rolled over off the side of the bed and grabbed for his book-bag half-hidden beneath the mattress.
"Akanishi," he hissed. Jin hadn't moved, even when the door had opened. The RA had moved onto the next room, and Jun could hear the activity going on in the hallway. There were a lot of voices, and they all sounded very awake, but he couldn't hear any sirens. Nothing was ringing or flashing through the corridor.
He punched the lump in Jin's bed none-too-gently. "Jin. Get up, something is going on."
As his roommate's sleeping form wriggled a bit, Jun started shoving what he could into his bag- his iPod, the book he'd been studying for Professor Ogura's class, whatever he'd need in the next day or so. He didn't know what was going on, but it seemed like if anything, it would last for at least 24 hours. Maybe longer.
He swallowed back the sudden lump in his throat. Maybe there was a threat. Nuclear war, attack from the east- it could be anything.
"Jin!" A hand shot out from underneath the blankets, slapping Jun's hand away.
"Not going," came the muffled response.
Jun glanced towards the open door- people were filing past, whispering amongst themselves. He could feel their nervousness with every quickening breath. "We have to go, RA said to get your stuff. Something is going on."
"I said I'm not going." Another slap, harder this time, and Jun danced away from the side of the bed. He reached for his shoes by the door, and slung his arms quickly through a hooded sweatshirt. The RA appeared back in the doorway, hands bracing either side. His hair was slightly askew, and he looked out of breath- out of breath? The man had more muscles in one bicep than half the floor did in their whole bodies.
It was not making Jun feel any less unsettled.
"Leave him," the RA demanded.
"But-" Jun started. He wasn't even sure why- he hadn't gotten any studying done earlier thanks to Jin's fascination with music consisting wholly of synthesized drum beats.
His RA was motioning for him to follow, out into the throw of people moving through the halls. "Just leave him, come on. We have to move."
Jun slung his backpack over one shoulder, and did as he was told. He spared Jin one short backwards glance before he was engulfed in the crowd beyond his dorm portal. There were so many, not just from his floor; the girls from two over, the guys beyond them, everyone was there, jumbled up together trying to get out of the building. There were still no alarms ringing- and in the chaos, the emergency lights near the ceiling looked oddly dull.
His heart was in his throat, and it throbbed.
"What's going on?" he asked, but his RA had disappeared further into the crowd, swimming through the sea of bodies, and he couldn't identify anyone he recognized around him. He just kept moving, keeping up with the frenzied pace, trying to discern enough of the whispers to understand what was going on.
All he could catch was something crazy and see the news? this is about the news broadcast.
They wouldn't survive a nuclear war. It couldn't be a nuclear war- could it?
--
There were people everywhere.
The resident advisors and dorm staff were trying to keep the students orderly, but nobody was paying much attention. With the late hour and the general confusion, Jun wasn’t surprised. The campus public address system was on.
“…A, B and C dorm complexes are being routed to south campus. Repeat. A, B and C undergraduate dorm complexes are being routed to south campus. Science buildings and computer labs. Stay together and remain calm. D and E undergraduate dorm complexes and graduate dorms are being routed to north campus. Repeat. The sports gyms on north campus will be housing D and E undergraduate…”
Jun pulled his phone from his pocket as he shuffled along behind some chattering girls. He blinked a few times, wondering if he was dreaming. Network busy, the phone readout was telling him. Looking around him, other students were equally frustrated while a few were complaining about dropped calls.
They were led away from his set of dorms and north through the main campus buildings. The girls in front of him were in their pajamas. “I was going to go work out, but they had the whole place barricaded off this afternoon.”
“Really?” her friend replied. “But we’re going there now. What the hell is going on?”
He tuned out their conversation, letting it blend in with the dozens of other conversations going on around him. He was just so damn tired. And everyone was trying to call home, call friends. For something so chaotic, people weren’t moving all that fast. It took the better part of an hour to get from the dorm to the gym.
It was surreal. There were large spotlights set up, barricades, and when they came within fifty meters of the building or so, there was a police officer standing on one of the fountains that decorated this part of campus.
“We need female students to go left and males to the right. Please remain orderly! Keep cell phone usage to a minimum. Females to the left…”
The talkative girls moved left, and Jun was shuffled right. People kept jostling and pushing, nearly knocking his bag from his shoulder. He’d given up entirely on the phone for now. There was a queue winding around the building, all tired male students looking bored as the line slowly moved. Jun followed the herd into the queue, and another hour or so passed before he got close to the entrance. What the hell was taking so long?
As he got up to the door, he saw a strange scene. “Is that an infrared camera?” the guys behind him were mumbling. No wonder there was a hold up. Each person was expected to stand still while some people in white coats watched on a monitor as another pointed some kind of device at them. It was something out of a science fiction movie. After that, they disappeared into the building.
The line continued slowly forward. The young man in front of Jun stepped up, yawning heavily as the guy with the lab coat pointed the imager at him. The device beeped, and the two workers behind the monitor made a face. Jun could only watch as one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police took the student by the arm.
“Come along with me, sir.”
The student bent over and picked up his backpack. “Something wrong?”
“No, absolutely not,” the guy in the lab coat told him. “Just a precaution.” Jun felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as the policeman escorted the student away. But it was his turn. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to get taken away.
He stood still, looking anywhere but at the man with the beeping machine. “Try to stay calm,” the man said quietly. “We don’t want a false reading.”
Jun nodded, staring at the gym door. He’d pass through there. He was going to get inside, and the need to get inside and out of this line was all that consumed his thoughts as he stood there.
“Thank you. Please go on ahead.” The next student was already moving into his space, and Jun felt a rush of relief. He pushed through the doors only to see that there was another line. They were in the hallway outside the gymnasium, and he went up on his tiptoes, seeing white curtains drawn and students disappearing behind them. What the hell?
This line moved slowly, and Jun checked his phone for the time. It was nearly 4:00 in the morning now. Would they cancel classes? How long was this going to take? What were they even doing? His time came to go behind the curtained off area. He sat in a chair and waited, backpack at his feet.
There was a woman with a clipboard. “Name.”
“Matsumoto Jun.”
“Dorm?”
“D complex, Yoshimoto Hall, room…”
“Thank you.” The woman pinned a paper bracelet on him like he was in a hospital and left with a swish of the curtain.
A harried looking nurse came in soon after. “Finger please.” He simply held his left hand out. The woman swabbed his index finger with a cotton ball, sending the harsh, sterile scent of alcohol into his nostrils, offering no warning before she poked him with a needle. He heard the little click before he felt it, and by then she was already holding his finger with a gloved hand, squeezing a droplet of his blood out onto a slide. He didn’t get a chance to see where she put it.
“Thank you,” she said, dropping a bandage into his open palm. “Move along please.”
He was shuffled along, and there was a police officer waiting to direct him. “Into the locker room. Please be sure to put your bandaid on. Into the locker room…”
Jun’s panic was growing as he was routed into the locker room. There were people in here too, not watching them shower, but standing by huge laundry carts. “Please deposit your clothes in here. They will be washed and returned.”
Everyone was already stripping down, no time to be modest, but Jun was puzzled. How would they know whose clothes belonged to who? He shook his head and took off his sweatshirt and jeans and shot them across to the room like he was throwing a basketball. Everyone else had the same idea. He was down to his underwear and opened the little locker. Inside was a pair of hospital scrubs, one size fits most. He frowned, shoving his backpack inside and taking the clothes to one of the shower stalls. At least they weren’t taking his underpants.
He had no soap and just let the hot water beat down on his skin. It had been over an hour since he’d been pulled out of the dorm. Had Jin even gotten up? If he had, he was probably calling up whichever foreign exchange student he was seeing this week. Practicing his English. Or his French, Jun thought with a roll of his eyes.
What was happening with the people who had decided not to follow along? The guy in the shower stall next to him was humming, as if he didn’t have a care in the world while two guys a few stalls down were having a noisy conversation.
“You think they’re putting the people who didn’t pass the scan in containment?”
“What do you think this is? This is the containment, man. They’re keeping the infected ones out.”
Jun strained to hear as the water streamed over his head. “What do you mean infected?” the friend asked. “I thought the news was saying it was just a rumor. Some lab accident getting over exaggerated.”
The two students’ showers turned off, effectively ending their conversation, and Jun stayed a few minutes more under the spray before turning it off, using the coarse white towel provided and getting into the green scrubs. The pants were too big and the shirt was a little tight, but he didn’t care. Containment? Infected? Lab accident?
He retrieved his backpack from his locker, and then kicked it. “Damn it,” he swore, realizing he’d left his cell phone in the pocket of his jeans. Those weren’t coming back, he figured. They’d been scanned, tagged, poked and scrubbed clean. The clothes were getting incinerated, weren’t they? He’d seen enough movies.
The rear exit for the locker room led to the gym where there were already dozens of other guys in green, ill-fitting scrubs wandering around, talking, sitting. There were cots lined up, military style. Like a refugee camp or a shelter after a natural disaster. But nobody was panicking. Everyone was just quiet, exhausted, overwhelmed.
He saw the guy from next floor, the jerk with the subwoofers, and he walked the other way. He wasn’t sleeping there if he could help it. Jun made his way across the gym to the final row. There was a bed open next to the one just under the basketball hoop, and the kid there was waving him over.
“Here, right next to me.”
Jun didn’t recognize him from his dorm. But it was a large campus - it was impossible to know that many people. He realized that there was soft music piping in through the gymnasium speakers, a piano sonata or something. The scoreboard behind the hoop was on, providing most of the light since the gym lights were dimmed. 4:30 in the morning was still 4:30 in the morning.
He set his backpack down on the cot and sat, kicking his shoes off and sliding them underneath. “Sure is weird, huh?” the other guy said, and despite the weird atmosphere, he didn’t seem as upset as Jun felt.
“Yeah.”
“They just came by a few minutes ago, saying there’d be some announcement at 8:00 AM. I don’t know if it’s about classes or what’s going on, but they said 8:00.”
Jun nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
“I’m Aiba, by the way. Masaki. I’m in the physics department. Okay, scratch that. Formerly of the physics department. Well.” The guy held up a letter he was writing. “I was actually going in to change my major to biochem today, so I guess that’s out.”
“Jun. Accounting. And econ, I guess.”
Aiba smiled. “Number cruncher.”
He hugged his backpack close and laid down, shoving at the pillow as he tried to get comfortable. “Guess so.”
“Going to sleep?”
This guy was already annoying, but he was just so exhausted that he didn’t care enough to yell at him to shut up. Anyone was better than dealing with Jin. “Wake me if they announce anything.”
“Sure.”
He closed his eyes, trying to ignore everyone’s conversation. He hadn’t brought any manga, but it wasn’t really good lighting to read anyhow. He pulled his iPod from his backpack, suddenly thankful he hadn’t left that in his jeans. Aiba told people passing by to be quiet, although he got a little noisy telling people that the bed on his other side was “empty, but reserved.”
Finally, his exhaustion claimed him.
--
Jun woke to a finger poking at this shoulder.
"Jun," came the hushed voice. "Jun, wake up. They're starting the announcement."
It took several agonizingly long moments for Jun to re-orient himself- he wasn't in his bed, wasn't in his dorm, and it was not Jin who was waking him. He blinked up at the harsh lights hanging overhead, struggling to remember what had happened before he'd fallen into a fitful sleep with his iPod on. One ear bud had fallen out of his ear, and he reached up to detangle the cord from around his neck.
Aiba. Aiba and the slightly itchy regulation issued clothes against his skin.
Jun sat up and grabbed for his glasses again, rubbing at his temples. The irritatingly soothing elevator music stopped with two melodic 'pings'.
"This is an emergency action notification. All broadcast stations and cable systems shall transmit this emergency action notification message. This is Radio Nippon, JORF 1422khz. We will continue to serve the Tokyo area."
Jun looked uneasily over at Aiba, who was sitting on his cot with one leg tucked beneath his body, twiddling his fingers. The other man didn't look nervous, but when he caught Jun's gaze, there was a bit of uncertainty on his features. The activity around them, which had been a bit sluggish and slow as the exhausted people continued to pile inside, slowed further to a halt as all eyes turned up towards the speakers mounted on the walls.
"Do not use your telephone. The telephone lines should be kept open for emergency use." Two more beeps- the end of the station's own message, then. Jun glanced past Aiba to the cot that had been "empty but reserved" when he'd fallen asleep; there was a pristine-looking bookbag sitting atop the sheets, which didn't appear to have been slept in. Whoever Aiba had been waiting for seemed to have showed up.
"It is April 10th. Due to possible health threats within Japan, a national quarantine order has been issued effective immediately. All citizens are to report to the nearest safety center. Repeat, all citizens are to report to the nearest safety center."
"Safety center?" Jun murmured, under his breath.
"It's what they've been calling this," Aiba answered. "Everyone- the orderlies, the security guards. I guess it's Safety Center 9."
There was a bit of static, just a crinkle, and even that sent shivers up Jun's spine. "Non-infected parties are to remain within the confines until the threat to public health has been declared to be passed. Remain orderly and respectful at all times, and comply with all instructions given by security and health officials. More information will be dispersed as it becomes available."
Almost immediately, the melodic keyboard music started back up again, and the crowd began to get restless. The swelling of voices against the songs piped through the speakers was dissonant and jarring- but not anymore than the broadcast itself had been.
"I guess that's it?" Aiba cocked his head a bit, glancing up once last time at the ceiling beams and rickety catwalks.
There was a knot of apprehension in Jun's throat that he couldn't swallow down. "Possible health threats?"
"Guess it's something about an infection," Aiba said. He shrugged.
"I watched a guy get hauled out by security when I came in." Jun's fingers tightened involuntarily around his iPod, still in the palm of his hand. The metal was warm, but the worn sides were oddly comforting. "It isn't possible- they were scanning us for something, don't you remember?"
Instead of answering his question, Aiba reached under his cot and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it Jun. "Here. They've been passing them out to everyone, so I grabbed one while you were sleeping."
"Thanks," Jun said, slowly, taking the offered container. He stared down at the clear liquid splashing within the plastic. "I don't think you're going to get to change your major today."
"They canceled classes," the other man said. He swung his dangling leg up on the cot and tapped out a rhythm on his knees with both thumbs. "A bunch of the grad students are helping out trying to keep things calm. But that's all we've been told."
Jun watched as a young-looking man, probably a freshman, wandered into the sleeping quarters with wide eyes. His hands were wrapped so tightly around his backpack straps that Jun could tell his knuckles were white even from his seated vantage point. Tensions were high, so high he could practically taste it in the air.
"How long do you think this will last?" he asked. It was mostly rhetorical, and mostly to himself- it was obvious that no one else had any information, either.
"I hope not that long!" Aiba said. "I was supposed to go home this weekend to take care of my dog. He's terrible when he gets his hair cut, it's always a big ordeal."
Jun didn't really want to tell the man that, given the way things were looking around him, it was doubtful he would get out in time to assist in dog-grooming activities. Aiba was annoying and talked too much and too loud, but at least he was talking. Mindless chatter and unnecessary babble was better than the stony silent treatment most of the orderlies seemed to have been ordered to give. It was nice, in a weird way, to have someone to just talk with.
He screwed off the lid to the water bottle and took a couple sips.
"Do you have a cell phone?" Aiba asked. "I know they told us not to use them, but I really wanted to call home, and I haven't been able to get a signal at all."
"I left mine in my clothes," Jun sighed. Upon seeing Aiba's slightly confused expression, he added, "I'm never going to see it again."
He took another sip of water, and nearly spat it out when a figure approached them looking haggard and tired, running a hand wearily through dark strands of hair.
"Oh!" Aiba exclaimed, hopping off the bed with alarming energy. "Any more information?"
"Nothing new," came the response, followed by an exhausted-sounding sigh. "Just that-"
He stopped, and so did Jun's heart. Someone nearby was complaining loudly about the lack of privacy in the sleeping quarters- it was ridiculously loud against Jun's ears, like they were screaming directly next to him. After what felt like a lifetime, Aiba shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking between the two.
"Oh, right," he said, with a little laugh. "Jun, this is Sho. He's a graduate student."
Jun felt like he'd eaten a handful of cotton balls. "Yeah."
"Classes are probably canceled for the rest of the week," Sho finished. His voice sounded much weaker than it had initially.
Aiba actually looked disappointed. "Dang, really?"
Jun focused on a few of the security guards walking past the far wall as Sho flopped down on the cot with the book-bag on it. He kept watching the figures as they moved around, but other than the guy who liked his bass loud enough to wake the dead, he couldn't see anyone else he recognized, not even his resident advisor.
He actually found himself wishing that he'd managed to get Jin to come along.
"But we should get more information soon, right?" Aiba was asking, when Jun crashed back into the reality surrounding him.
"Dunno," came the response, muffled by Sho's face in his pillow. When he ceased answering questions entirely, Aiba just sighed and turned back to face Jun, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well," he said, pausing. "I think we might be here for awhile."
"Think you might be right," Jun choked out.
Aiba reached into his backpack and brandished a small box with a flourish. "Wanna play cards?"
Chapter: 1/10
Fandom: Arashi
Character, Pairing(s): Jun, Aiba, Sho
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Sexual situations, and language. General disquiet?
Summary: Do you remember me? Lost for so long? Will you be on the other side? Will you forget me?
The hand around his waist gripped tighter, more possessively as his senpai’s warm breath tickled his neck. “Come on,” he said, louder than he should have in the dorm corridor at three in the morning. “Let me at least get my key out.”
“I am so wasted right now,” he heard against his earlobe, shivering at the feeling of moisture from the other man’s tongue.
He shakily got the key out of the pocket of his jeans, shoving it roughly into the lock and turning. They nearly tumbled into the room, and he barely got the door closed and relocked before fingers were tugging at the buttons of his shirt. “Your roommate here?” Senpai asked, almost an embarrassed afterthought.
“Home for the weekend.”
“Home for the weekend. Good,” was the response, and his limbs were so light and his movements sloppy as he struggled out of his shoes, kicking them to the corner of the room. Normally, he’d take the time to line them up, something his roommate always laughed at him for.
Jin’s desk was closer, and his hip collided with it hard enough to knock the guy’s folder full of old papers and class handouts to the floor. He’d fix it. Later. Instead he laughed, scooting until he was sitting down next to his roommate’s pencil case and pulling Senpai forward.
His mind was blurry, floating, awash with memories of the hours at the desk just feet away. Lecturing, flash cards, chart after fucking chart. And having Senpai watching over his shoulders, standing closer than he’d thought made sense, but now. Now it made sense.
There’d been sake. And then beer, and then something with an umbrella in it once his other classmates had gone back to the dorms before them. Macro Theory was done, his minor was halfway complete, and he was on Jin’s desk trying to catch his breath. He struggled out of his button-down as clumsy fingers worked on his belt. He was drunk, really drunk. But was this really going to happen?
Senpai had always been so quiet. But with a few drinks, that had changed. They both still smelled like the bar, the sweetness of the sake and the cloying cigarette smoke mingled, burrowing itself in his skin. Senpai had too much clothes on. He got greedy, tugging at the other man’s jacket, pulling at the thin t-shirt underneath and dragging his mouth along his jaw.
“Should have gotten a better grade,” Senpai was mumbling, voice husky and slurring. “Don’t know what we were celebrating.”
“Shut up.”
For someone always with his nose in a book, Senpai had a great body. His fingers lingered there, the skin there hot to the touch. He wanted to learn every part of it. He was too wasted to know who moved first, but he was off the desk, stumbling in the dark over piles of clothes and empty instant ramen cups and pulling Senpai with him.
He landed on his back, and why did they still have so much clothes on? The asshole in the room next door had his music on, a thumping bass that was pulsing almost rhythmically. For once, he didn’t actually mind the rumbling coming through the thin walls of the dorm. He caught Senpai’s lip between his teeth, sucking and nipping. There was still so much clothes. He was sweating.
It took an eternity to get all the way down to his boxers, and he arched up off of the mattress as Senpai reached for him. “Jesus,” he muttered, and the alcohol was making him feel like he was in free fall. It was clumsy. It was obvious that the older man didn’t know if he should focus on kissing him or working his cock up and down, but it wasn’t a dilemma he’d ever faced either.
The heat between his legs was building, and there wasn’t any talking now. Just hitching breaths and sighs and the music rattling the dorm wall. He ran his hand down the other man’s bicep as he worked, feeling the muscles tighten and loosen. It was so fast, like he was somewhere else as he came, burying his face in the other man’s neck, cigarettes and the faintest cologne and the thin black chain of his necklace. He’d probably just throw his sheets away since they were on break for the next few weeks anyhow.
He was tired, booze catching up the way it tended to at this point in the night, but he ignored his body’s protests and kissed his way along Senpai’s collarbone, letting his own hand go between their bodies. He was rewarded with a groan as he undid the small button keeping the front of the other man’s boxers closed. “Please,” Senpai whispered before pulling their mouths together again.
He was probably too sloppy, too rough, so drunk there was no way it was enjoyable, but the other man’s breath kept catching, moaning quietly as their lips broke contact every few seconds. It was so strange to feel the usually controlled, intellectually-minded man losing it, and it only spurred him on. He pushed Senpai’s face away, drawn once more to the scent of him, to the pulse point on his neck. He sucked at the skin there, rough and needy as his fingers slipped clumsily over the man’s cock.
There’d probably be a mark in the morning, purple and nasty, but he wasn’t hearing any complaints. Just the bass making his blood rush and the increasingly noisy sounds coming from the man beside him. “Oh god.” Senpai made some strangled gasp, like he couldn’t believe what was happening either, and there was warmth spilling into his hand before he realized it.
They both came down, crashing with the realization of what had happened in the minutes since leaving the bar. All he could do before passing out was to find the thin sheet the two of them had kicked down to the bottom of the bed, pulling it up to cover them both before he forgot himself entirely in sleep.
When he awoke, his head was pounding and he’d forgot that he’d set his alarm for 8:00. He knocked it off the table beside the bed, hearing it clatter to the floor with a thud. He pulled the sheet up over his head and was almost back to sleep until he realized he was alone.
Jin slammed the door so hard the mug on Jun's desk rattled against the grain.
"Asshole," his roommate grumbled. The lines on Jun's homework blurred a bit, numbers fading in and out of each other- he'd just started back up and he was already having trouble focusing. The semester was not looking promising, though he blamed a large part of that on Professor Ogura's monotonous voice that had soporific properties of uncharted power. Trying to drone out Jin's repeated mumbling, which Jun assumed was only supposed to be for Jin himself, he reached over and turned up the volume on the small television set perched atop a precariously high stack of hard-cover books.
He cracked his knuckles and looked back down at his statistics homework, but within moments Jin was loudly throwing around old notebooks, pulling them carelessly from his desk drawers. "You'd think that there'd be anyway I could just-"
"Jin," Jun called, taking a few seconds to try and calm his rising ire, "are you looking for something?"
His only answer was the crash of more books to the growing pile on the floor, and the crumpling of paper. Raising his fingers to massage his temples, Jun sighed. He hadn't expected the start of the new term to be easy, but he hadn't counted on pages of homework assignments within the first week. It was hard enough to get his brain back into study-mode; he could have used a week or two to ease back into the whole thing.
By the look of things, his best bet would be to hit the library after his last lecture just to get some peace and quiet in attempts to get his assignments done.
He leaned over and turned the volume on the TV up again. The woman on-location cut to one of night anchors in a crisp suit, hands folded seriously over a stack of documents on the desk in front of him.
"Don't know why he's yelling at me," Jin continued grumbling under his breath behind Jun's back, and there was the sound of what seemed to be the desk drawer getting pulled noisily from the tracks. "Bastard just likes to freak out and hear himself scream-"
Jun only got to five before getting too upset to continue, and had to restart the slow numbering under his breath. Tomorrow he'd hit the library. He couldn't afford to fall behind on studying because his roommate had a problem controlling his noise level.
He didn't think Professor Ogura was going to accept the excuse of 'I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't finish my homework because my roommate is a dick' for why all Jun's assignments were handed in blank.
"We are receiving reports from several government channels labeled as urgent, and apologize for interrupting the regularly scheduled local sports coverage," the anchor on the television screen said, and Jun's eyes lazily flicked to one side to watch. "According to the information we've received, there are a large number of potentially dangerous-"
The TV jolted black, and Jin's finger fell away from the power button with a 'tsk' of annoyance.
"Jin, I was watching that," Jun said.
"Some of us can't study with the television on," came the retort. He heard his roommate's weight settle into his desk chair, and several pages turn in the notebook before the music started up through his laptop speakers. For someone who "couldn't study with the TV on", Jin listened to his music awfully loud while reading textbooks. Jun was half-convinced the guy had an iTunes playlist titled something like metal to drive Jun crazy or seizure-inducing techno rave mix part III just for the occasions when he cracked a book open and pretended to absorb what it was attempting to teach him.
Jun took a deep breath to steady himself. "Think you could turn that down a bit?"
The only response was the little 'pings' of the volume being turned up. Swallowing down every possible scenario for how he could get away with murdering his roommate and blaming it on the custodial staff, Jun reached into the top drawer on his desk and pulled out his headphones and iPod.
It wasn't much, but sometimes he could pretend like Jin's emo music tastes were drowned out by Contemporary Sounds of the Nishiki Biwa.
--
He awoke to furious pounding on his door, so hard and fast it knocked down the coat hooks they had taped on the back with 3M strips. It startled him almost out of bed; his fingers had barely closed around his glasses on the desk before the door was thrown open by the RA holding a key with shaking hands.
"Get up," he rasped. "Get up and get your stuff."
"What?" Jun croaked- it felt like something had died in his throat. If he had to suffer through one more 'readiness' fire drill he was going to chuck his alarm clock at the RA's head.
The RA just threw the light switch on, flooding the room so fast it stung Jun's eyes. "Get up. Now."
There was something in his voice; the hitch, the tone, the waver- there was something on that was more than the university keeping consistent with fire drill policies. The RA was a big guy- was on the rowing team- and he looked nervous. Anxious. It was making little knots in Jun's stomach that didn't go away even as he rolled over off the side of the bed and grabbed for his book-bag half-hidden beneath the mattress.
"Akanishi," he hissed. Jin hadn't moved, even when the door had opened. The RA had moved onto the next room, and Jun could hear the activity going on in the hallway. There were a lot of voices, and they all sounded very awake, but he couldn't hear any sirens. Nothing was ringing or flashing through the corridor.
He punched the lump in Jin's bed none-too-gently. "Jin. Get up, something is going on."
As his roommate's sleeping form wriggled a bit, Jun started shoving what he could into his bag- his iPod, the book he'd been studying for Professor Ogura's class, whatever he'd need in the next day or so. He didn't know what was going on, but it seemed like if anything, it would last for at least 24 hours. Maybe longer.
He swallowed back the sudden lump in his throat. Maybe there was a threat. Nuclear war, attack from the east- it could be anything.
"Jin!" A hand shot out from underneath the blankets, slapping Jun's hand away.
"Not going," came the muffled response.
Jun glanced towards the open door- people were filing past, whispering amongst themselves. He could feel their nervousness with every quickening breath. "We have to go, RA said to get your stuff. Something is going on."
"I said I'm not going." Another slap, harder this time, and Jun danced away from the side of the bed. He reached for his shoes by the door, and slung his arms quickly through a hooded sweatshirt. The RA appeared back in the doorway, hands bracing either side. His hair was slightly askew, and he looked out of breath- out of breath? The man had more muscles in one bicep than half the floor did in their whole bodies.
It was not making Jun feel any less unsettled.
"Leave him," the RA demanded.
"But-" Jun started. He wasn't even sure why- he hadn't gotten any studying done earlier thanks to Jin's fascination with music consisting wholly of synthesized drum beats.
His RA was motioning for him to follow, out into the throw of people moving through the halls. "Just leave him, come on. We have to move."
Jun slung his backpack over one shoulder, and did as he was told. He spared Jin one short backwards glance before he was engulfed in the crowd beyond his dorm portal. There were so many, not just from his floor; the girls from two over, the guys beyond them, everyone was there, jumbled up together trying to get out of the building. There were still no alarms ringing- and in the chaos, the emergency lights near the ceiling looked oddly dull.
His heart was in his throat, and it throbbed.
"What's going on?" he asked, but his RA had disappeared further into the crowd, swimming through the sea of bodies, and he couldn't identify anyone he recognized around him. He just kept moving, keeping up with the frenzied pace, trying to discern enough of the whispers to understand what was going on.
All he could catch was something crazy and see the news? this is about the news broadcast.
They wouldn't survive a nuclear war. It couldn't be a nuclear war- could it?
--
There were people everywhere.
The resident advisors and dorm staff were trying to keep the students orderly, but nobody was paying much attention. With the late hour and the general confusion, Jun wasn’t surprised. The campus public address system was on.
“…A, B and C dorm complexes are being routed to south campus. Repeat. A, B and C undergraduate dorm complexes are being routed to south campus. Science buildings and computer labs. Stay together and remain calm. D and E undergraduate dorm complexes and graduate dorms are being routed to north campus. Repeat. The sports gyms on north campus will be housing D and E undergraduate…”
Jun pulled his phone from his pocket as he shuffled along behind some chattering girls. He blinked a few times, wondering if he was dreaming. Network busy, the phone readout was telling him. Looking around him, other students were equally frustrated while a few were complaining about dropped calls.
They were led away from his set of dorms and north through the main campus buildings. The girls in front of him were in their pajamas. “I was going to go work out, but they had the whole place barricaded off this afternoon.”
“Really?” her friend replied. “But we’re going there now. What the hell is going on?”
He tuned out their conversation, letting it blend in with the dozens of other conversations going on around him. He was just so damn tired. And everyone was trying to call home, call friends. For something so chaotic, people weren’t moving all that fast. It took the better part of an hour to get from the dorm to the gym.
It was surreal. There were large spotlights set up, barricades, and when they came within fifty meters of the building or so, there was a police officer standing on one of the fountains that decorated this part of campus.
“We need female students to go left and males to the right. Please remain orderly! Keep cell phone usage to a minimum. Females to the left…”
The talkative girls moved left, and Jun was shuffled right. People kept jostling and pushing, nearly knocking his bag from his shoulder. He’d given up entirely on the phone for now. There was a queue winding around the building, all tired male students looking bored as the line slowly moved. Jun followed the herd into the queue, and another hour or so passed before he got close to the entrance. What the hell was taking so long?
As he got up to the door, he saw a strange scene. “Is that an infrared camera?” the guys behind him were mumbling. No wonder there was a hold up. Each person was expected to stand still while some people in white coats watched on a monitor as another pointed some kind of device at them. It was something out of a science fiction movie. After that, they disappeared into the building.
The line continued slowly forward. The young man in front of Jun stepped up, yawning heavily as the guy with the lab coat pointed the imager at him. The device beeped, and the two workers behind the monitor made a face. Jun could only watch as one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police took the student by the arm.
“Come along with me, sir.”
The student bent over and picked up his backpack. “Something wrong?”
“No, absolutely not,” the guy in the lab coat told him. “Just a precaution.” Jun felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as the policeman escorted the student away. But it was his turn. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to get taken away.
He stood still, looking anywhere but at the man with the beeping machine. “Try to stay calm,” the man said quietly. “We don’t want a false reading.”
Jun nodded, staring at the gym door. He’d pass through there. He was going to get inside, and the need to get inside and out of this line was all that consumed his thoughts as he stood there.
“Thank you. Please go on ahead.” The next student was already moving into his space, and Jun felt a rush of relief. He pushed through the doors only to see that there was another line. They were in the hallway outside the gymnasium, and he went up on his tiptoes, seeing white curtains drawn and students disappearing behind them. What the hell?
This line moved slowly, and Jun checked his phone for the time. It was nearly 4:00 in the morning now. Would they cancel classes? How long was this going to take? What were they even doing? His time came to go behind the curtained off area. He sat in a chair and waited, backpack at his feet.
There was a woman with a clipboard. “Name.”
“Matsumoto Jun.”
“Dorm?”
“D complex, Yoshimoto Hall, room…”
“Thank you.” The woman pinned a paper bracelet on him like he was in a hospital and left with a swish of the curtain.
A harried looking nurse came in soon after. “Finger please.” He simply held his left hand out. The woman swabbed his index finger with a cotton ball, sending the harsh, sterile scent of alcohol into his nostrils, offering no warning before she poked him with a needle. He heard the little click before he felt it, and by then she was already holding his finger with a gloved hand, squeezing a droplet of his blood out onto a slide. He didn’t get a chance to see where she put it.
“Thank you,” she said, dropping a bandage into his open palm. “Move along please.”
He was shuffled along, and there was a police officer waiting to direct him. “Into the locker room. Please be sure to put your bandaid on. Into the locker room…”
Jun’s panic was growing as he was routed into the locker room. There were people in here too, not watching them shower, but standing by huge laundry carts. “Please deposit your clothes in here. They will be washed and returned.”
Everyone was already stripping down, no time to be modest, but Jun was puzzled. How would they know whose clothes belonged to who? He shook his head and took off his sweatshirt and jeans and shot them across to the room like he was throwing a basketball. Everyone else had the same idea. He was down to his underwear and opened the little locker. Inside was a pair of hospital scrubs, one size fits most. He frowned, shoving his backpack inside and taking the clothes to one of the shower stalls. At least they weren’t taking his underpants.
He had no soap and just let the hot water beat down on his skin. It had been over an hour since he’d been pulled out of the dorm. Had Jin even gotten up? If he had, he was probably calling up whichever foreign exchange student he was seeing this week. Practicing his English. Or his French, Jun thought with a roll of his eyes.
What was happening with the people who had decided not to follow along? The guy in the shower stall next to him was humming, as if he didn’t have a care in the world while two guys a few stalls down were having a noisy conversation.
“You think they’re putting the people who didn’t pass the scan in containment?”
“What do you think this is? This is the containment, man. They’re keeping the infected ones out.”
Jun strained to hear as the water streamed over his head. “What do you mean infected?” the friend asked. “I thought the news was saying it was just a rumor. Some lab accident getting over exaggerated.”
The two students’ showers turned off, effectively ending their conversation, and Jun stayed a few minutes more under the spray before turning it off, using the coarse white towel provided and getting into the green scrubs. The pants were too big and the shirt was a little tight, but he didn’t care. Containment? Infected? Lab accident?
He retrieved his backpack from his locker, and then kicked it. “Damn it,” he swore, realizing he’d left his cell phone in the pocket of his jeans. Those weren’t coming back, he figured. They’d been scanned, tagged, poked and scrubbed clean. The clothes were getting incinerated, weren’t they? He’d seen enough movies.
The rear exit for the locker room led to the gym where there were already dozens of other guys in green, ill-fitting scrubs wandering around, talking, sitting. There were cots lined up, military style. Like a refugee camp or a shelter after a natural disaster. But nobody was panicking. Everyone was just quiet, exhausted, overwhelmed.
He saw the guy from next floor, the jerk with the subwoofers, and he walked the other way. He wasn’t sleeping there if he could help it. Jun made his way across the gym to the final row. There was a bed open next to the one just under the basketball hoop, and the kid there was waving him over.
“Here, right next to me.”
Jun didn’t recognize him from his dorm. But it was a large campus - it was impossible to know that many people. He realized that there was soft music piping in through the gymnasium speakers, a piano sonata or something. The scoreboard behind the hoop was on, providing most of the light since the gym lights were dimmed. 4:30 in the morning was still 4:30 in the morning.
He set his backpack down on the cot and sat, kicking his shoes off and sliding them underneath. “Sure is weird, huh?” the other guy said, and despite the weird atmosphere, he didn’t seem as upset as Jun felt.
“Yeah.”
“They just came by a few minutes ago, saying there’d be some announcement at 8:00 AM. I don’t know if it’s about classes or what’s going on, but they said 8:00.”
Jun nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
“I’m Aiba, by the way. Masaki. I’m in the physics department. Okay, scratch that. Formerly of the physics department. Well.” The guy held up a letter he was writing. “I was actually going in to change my major to biochem today, so I guess that’s out.”
“Jun. Accounting. And econ, I guess.”
Aiba smiled. “Number cruncher.”
He hugged his backpack close and laid down, shoving at the pillow as he tried to get comfortable. “Guess so.”
“Going to sleep?”
This guy was already annoying, but he was just so exhausted that he didn’t care enough to yell at him to shut up. Anyone was better than dealing with Jin. “Wake me if they announce anything.”
“Sure.”
He closed his eyes, trying to ignore everyone’s conversation. He hadn’t brought any manga, but it wasn’t really good lighting to read anyhow. He pulled his iPod from his backpack, suddenly thankful he hadn’t left that in his jeans. Aiba told people passing by to be quiet, although he got a little noisy telling people that the bed on his other side was “empty, but reserved.”
Finally, his exhaustion claimed him.
--
Jun woke to a finger poking at this shoulder.
"Jun," came the hushed voice. "Jun, wake up. They're starting the announcement."
It took several agonizingly long moments for Jun to re-orient himself- he wasn't in his bed, wasn't in his dorm, and it was not Jin who was waking him. He blinked up at the harsh lights hanging overhead, struggling to remember what had happened before he'd fallen into a fitful sleep with his iPod on. One ear bud had fallen out of his ear, and he reached up to detangle the cord from around his neck.
Aiba. Aiba and the slightly itchy regulation issued clothes against his skin.
Jun sat up and grabbed for his glasses again, rubbing at his temples. The irritatingly soothing elevator music stopped with two melodic 'pings'.
"This is an emergency action notification. All broadcast stations and cable systems shall transmit this emergency action notification message. This is Radio Nippon, JORF 1422khz. We will continue to serve the Tokyo area."
Jun looked uneasily over at Aiba, who was sitting on his cot with one leg tucked beneath his body, twiddling his fingers. The other man didn't look nervous, but when he caught Jun's gaze, there was a bit of uncertainty on his features. The activity around them, which had been a bit sluggish and slow as the exhausted people continued to pile inside, slowed further to a halt as all eyes turned up towards the speakers mounted on the walls.
"Do not use your telephone. The telephone lines should be kept open for emergency use." Two more beeps- the end of the station's own message, then. Jun glanced past Aiba to the cot that had been "empty but reserved" when he'd fallen asleep; there was a pristine-looking bookbag sitting atop the sheets, which didn't appear to have been slept in. Whoever Aiba had been waiting for seemed to have showed up.
"It is April 10th. Due to possible health threats within Japan, a national quarantine order has been issued effective immediately. All citizens are to report to the nearest safety center. Repeat, all citizens are to report to the nearest safety center."
"Safety center?" Jun murmured, under his breath.
"It's what they've been calling this," Aiba answered. "Everyone- the orderlies, the security guards. I guess it's Safety Center 9."
There was a bit of static, just a crinkle, and even that sent shivers up Jun's spine. "Non-infected parties are to remain within the confines until the threat to public health has been declared to be passed. Remain orderly and respectful at all times, and comply with all instructions given by security and health officials. More information will be dispersed as it becomes available."
Almost immediately, the melodic keyboard music started back up again, and the crowd began to get restless. The swelling of voices against the songs piped through the speakers was dissonant and jarring- but not anymore than the broadcast itself had been.
"I guess that's it?" Aiba cocked his head a bit, glancing up once last time at the ceiling beams and rickety catwalks.
There was a knot of apprehension in Jun's throat that he couldn't swallow down. "Possible health threats?"
"Guess it's something about an infection," Aiba said. He shrugged.
"I watched a guy get hauled out by security when I came in." Jun's fingers tightened involuntarily around his iPod, still in the palm of his hand. The metal was warm, but the worn sides were oddly comforting. "It isn't possible- they were scanning us for something, don't you remember?"
Instead of answering his question, Aiba reached under his cot and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it Jun. "Here. They've been passing them out to everyone, so I grabbed one while you were sleeping."
"Thanks," Jun said, slowly, taking the offered container. He stared down at the clear liquid splashing within the plastic. "I don't think you're going to get to change your major today."
"They canceled classes," the other man said. He swung his dangling leg up on the cot and tapped out a rhythm on his knees with both thumbs. "A bunch of the grad students are helping out trying to keep things calm. But that's all we've been told."
Jun watched as a young-looking man, probably a freshman, wandered into the sleeping quarters with wide eyes. His hands were wrapped so tightly around his backpack straps that Jun could tell his knuckles were white even from his seated vantage point. Tensions were high, so high he could practically taste it in the air.
"How long do you think this will last?" he asked. It was mostly rhetorical, and mostly to himself- it was obvious that no one else had any information, either.
"I hope not that long!" Aiba said. "I was supposed to go home this weekend to take care of my dog. He's terrible when he gets his hair cut, it's always a big ordeal."
Jun didn't really want to tell the man that, given the way things were looking around him, it was doubtful he would get out in time to assist in dog-grooming activities. Aiba was annoying and talked too much and too loud, but at least he was talking. Mindless chatter and unnecessary babble was better than the stony silent treatment most of the orderlies seemed to have been ordered to give. It was nice, in a weird way, to have someone to just talk with.
He screwed off the lid to the water bottle and took a couple sips.
"Do you have a cell phone?" Aiba asked. "I know they told us not to use them, but I really wanted to call home, and I haven't been able to get a signal at all."
"I left mine in my clothes," Jun sighed. Upon seeing Aiba's slightly confused expression, he added, "I'm never going to see it again."
He took another sip of water, and nearly spat it out when a figure approached them looking haggard and tired, running a hand wearily through dark strands of hair.
"Oh!" Aiba exclaimed, hopping off the bed with alarming energy. "Any more information?"
"Nothing new," came the response, followed by an exhausted-sounding sigh. "Just that-"
He stopped, and so did Jun's heart. Someone nearby was complaining loudly about the lack of privacy in the sleeping quarters- it was ridiculously loud against Jun's ears, like they were screaming directly next to him. After what felt like a lifetime, Aiba shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking between the two.
"Oh, right," he said, with a little laugh. "Jun, this is Sho. He's a graduate student."
Jun felt like he'd eaten a handful of cotton balls. "Yeah."
"Classes are probably canceled for the rest of the week," Sho finished. His voice sounded much weaker than it had initially.
Aiba actually looked disappointed. "Dang, really?"
Jun focused on a few of the security guards walking past the far wall as Sho flopped down on the cot with the book-bag on it. He kept watching the figures as they moved around, but other than the guy who liked his bass loud enough to wake the dead, he couldn't see anyone else he recognized, not even his resident advisor.
He actually found himself wishing that he'd managed to get Jin to come along.
"But we should get more information soon, right?" Aiba was asking, when Jun crashed back into the reality surrounding him.
"Dunno," came the response, muffled by Sho's face in his pillow. When he ceased answering questions entirely, Aiba just sighed and turned back to face Jun, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well," he said, pausing. "I think we might be here for awhile."
"Think you might be right," Jun choked out.
Aiba reached into his backpack and brandished a small box with a flourish. "Wanna play cards?"